


A Day in Four Acts

by thewindupbird



Category: Withnail & I (1986)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 06:26:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11617830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewindupbird/pseuds/thewindupbird
Summary: Withnail sits alone with a bottle of '53 Margeaux and a rifle. When Marwood returns, they are forced to face themselves, and what it means to be together and apart. Read and review.





	A Day in Four Acts

It started with a bad feeling…

Withnail hears his footsteps on the stairs and decides to be angry. No…. he decides to finish this like the most fucking _brilliant_ play anyone had ever seen. A tragedy to rival even Romeo and Juliet. He can taste the grease from the muzzle of the gun, and wonders how it will mingle with the wine he's poured down the barrel.

He tilts his head back, and experiments, tipping the gun and feeling the liquid slide over his tongue, warm. He hears Marwood in the kitchen, hears his footsteps getting closer. He will wait until just the right moment. Show that fucker what happens for… saying those things. For _hurting_ him that way. For making a better life for himself and leaving him here in the fucking dirt and filth and squalor of this fucking apartment; of this fucking life.

Marwood will push open the door and he will blow his own bastard brains out.

When the door creaks open. Tension shoots down his leg, making it twitch a little and his finger tightens on the trigger. He tilts his head back more and the wine pours down his throat. Now. Do it now.

" _Withnail!_ "

He closes his eyes, but he knows in that moment that he isn't going to do it, even as his head keeps telling him to. And it is for some stupid reason like _'_ he's _the only one who calls me by my surname._ ' His name has come out of Marwood's mouth sharp and fast and high-pitched, and Withnail wonders why it had affected him so, when he is so used to the man's ever so frequent panic attacks. His countless possible overdoses.

He barely moves as the gun is wrenched from his mouth and thrown to the side. He hears it hit the floor and bounce. What a stupid thing for a gun to do. Bounce.

He is shaken hard by the shoulders, and he bites his tongue, wincing. He opens his eyes to meet Marwood's, which are a colour he's never seen before. Dark and frightened. Suddenly he is pulled into an embrace, he is being pulled to the floor. He is never sure if Marwood knelt or if he fell unintentionally. He will always be curious about the answer, but he will never ask.

He can _hear_ the other man's teeth chattering, feel his own collarbone pressed uncomfortably against Marwood's shoulder

He wants to wrap his arms around him…

"Let go, get off," he says, shaking himself free and staggering up. He spits, not caring where it lands. The taste of grease is in his mouth and it is beginning to make him feel ill.

"What the fuck were you thinking?" Marwood cries, still in that terrified voice. Withnail glances sat him and looks away. He has to look away. The man is so pale, visibly shaking, teeth chattering as though he's just climbed out of a frozen lake. Or their apartment, for that matter.

"What the _fuck_ were you _thinking_?"

"Shut up, you're going to give me a headache."

"A headache? That bullet would have given you more than a headache, you fucking cunt!"

Withnail feels a strange swooping in his stomach and he swallows, but the taste of bile is already in his throat. Too late now. Turning he walks into the bathroom, quite calmly and then is violently ill into the toilet.

He hears Marwood unload the gun. God only knew what he does with the bullets. He knows he won't be able to find it when he comes back out. If he ever does. He might just die here, his body heaving up nothing but the wine that had today, and then nothing.

It starts to hurt, gagging and retching up that yellow-tinted mucus. He feels a warm hand on his back, between his shoulder blades but doesn't move away from the toilet. He is breathing in hard ragged breaths as though he's been running.

The nausea passes.

"You're going to miss your train," he says finally, after a long silence, his temples throbbing.

"It's left, Withnail."

"This is ridiculous,"

"You didn't think so in Penrith," Marwood retorts, sliding under the sheets beside Withnail's cold, too-thin body. They are both wearing only their underpants and in Withnail's case, socks.

"I thought we were going to fucking die there," Withnail says dramatically. "Stabbed to death, covered in… dead eels."

Marwood almost smiles, but he doesn't. It would be too late anyway because Withnail turns moodily away from Marwood, curling up surprisingly small for his height and not making another sound, but Marwood can tell he's awake. His shoulders are tense and his breath shallow.

He's hidden the bullets but he hasn't hidden them well. It had been a last second thing while Withnail retched in the toilet. They were rolling around somewhere in one of the drawers in the antique desk amidst empty packets of cigarettes, a box of unused candles and pens that don't work, and God only knew what else.

He would get rid of them tomorrow, but honestly, he was scared to leave Withnail alone in the apartment. He would have to do it in secret, somehow, bringing Withnail along with him.

He must have drifted off, but not heavily. He had forced Withnail to sleep in his room with him because he was afraid he would go off and find the bullets again, or overdose on purpose. It was a miracle it hadn't happened already, he knew, the man had more alcohol than blood in his veins. This way, he would wake up if Withnail left. With that thought he allowed himself some much needed sleep. But it was a thin sleep. He would wake up with the smallest move from the other man, but he would hear Withnail's breaths or touch some part of his bony back and drift off again.

He isn't sure what wakes him, but when he opens his eyes it is still dark. Withnail's eyes fixed on his startle him into full awareness. In the light from the moon like this, in this room, his eyes look younger. Healthier. Blue instead of translucent, dulled and drugged grey.

"Why did you come back?" Withnail's voice is barely a whisper.

"I had a bad feeling," Marwood replies, his voice heavy and thick with sleep. He clears his throat softly.

Withnail's expression changes. First annoyance, then incredulousness, then blank. Just blank. "You and your fucking feelings."

"It saved your life, didn't it?" he retorts, insulted.

"Maybe I didn't want it to be saved, did you ever think of that, you doss cunt," Withnail says as he rolls away, onto his back.

The insult is a real one. Marwood sits up in bed and twists around to turn the light on. A hand closes tightly on his arm.

"Don't, my head. Light will bring it back full force. At this rate it might be gone before morning."

Marwood relents and shakes his arm away. Withnail winces at the sudden jerk, long, nicotine-stained fingers pressing against his temple. He is leaning on one of his elbows but still considerably lower than the other man.

"What do you care. If it's still there by tomorrow, you can just fucking shoot yourself and have it all done with." He holds back the 'you fucker' that's on the tip of his tongue because then the insult would sound real. He doesn't want it to sound like he means it, but he wants to test him. He wants to see if Withnail really intended to do it.

"It was simply a momentary bout of insanity."

"You're always fucking insane."

"I wouldn't have done it."

There is a faint smile from Withnail. It's vague and forced and Marwood looks at him and Withnail returns his gaze and they both know that that isn't true… or it wasn't then, when he was sitting in that kitchen chair, pouring '53 Margeaux down his throat from the barrel of a gun. But it is now. Marwood can see the understanding in Withnail's eyes of what it would have meant - that bullet. Another layer of knowledge somehow dulling them even more. The only time he's ever seen those eyes look alive was when he was scared, a moment before the candle blew out in their little room in the country when they thought that Monty was the Poacher come to kill them.

Maybe they looked alive when he first met him.

He can no longer remember.

He cannot deny that this evening had scared him. Terrified him and he realises now that he would gladly give up that role in the film to be here right now, the last place he ever thought he would want to be. An apartment that was filthier than most back alleys and a soon-to-be-evicted roommate who was dragging him down and keeping him there – holding him so tightly it was often difficult to breathe. But this was better. This was ten _thousand_ times better than playing that fucking lead role and then getting a call saying that Withnail was dead and what did he want to do about it.

He pictures the scene. Withnail, head slung back at an impossible angle over the back of the wooden chair. A pool of blood surrounding it. From the doorway, his face looks fine, except for his open mouth and grey eyes staring blankly at the ceiling or something beyond it. Except for the gun that has fallen to the ground beside the chair and the wine staining the filthy wall behind him, mingling with the blood. He doesn't want to imagine moving any closer. He doesn't want to imagine the damage to that face that once not so pale and bitter and shadowed. The face on which faint freckles were still noticeable if you looked hard enough. The face that at one time must have had innocent looking eyes, not tainted by drug or drink or rejection after rejection of casting directors.

Withnail swallows, wanting to say, but unable to do it, that he is glad that Marwood is back. That everything seems so much less fucking _bleak_ now that he is here. He is his rock, somehow, as much as he hates to admit it, but he knows that no one else would put up with him. Even his fucking parents wouldn't put up with him. Bastards. They'd send him off to boarding school, and then to Oxford, and then they'd stopped dishing out the money. He was an actor. A despicable career in their books. Worthy of disownment. They had practically disowned him already.

He wants to do something. Maybe thank him, which seems stupid, because what is he thanking him for? For leaving? Without a care? For packing up so quickly and sending is father in to get the rest of the boxes. Withnail knew that he would blame the disastrous state of their apartment on him. Maybe he is thanking him for leaning him standing the rain with the fucking wolves who didn't know Hamlet from an amateur play, or for not even letting him walk with him to the fucking _station_ for God's sake.

Withnail doesn't expect Marwood's hand against his cheek. Hadn't seen it in the dark and the touch makes him suck in a breath. He tells himself it was because it surprised him, but the small electric shock that shoots up between his thighs tells him differently.

He ignores it, as he always has when Marwood walks close enough to bump into him ever other step. When he reached up and clutched his shoulder telling him he really didn't want him to walk to the station with him. When he grabs his arms and stands so close to keep him from doing the washing up because God only knows what was in, what could _still_ be in, that sink.

He swallows and tries to keep his face impassive, and maybe it doesn't work because Marwood's eyes soften and his lips part a little and the tinge of feeling between Withnail's legs becomes something more because here they are in the same bed that's really only meant for half a person. Had to be to fit in this little room… and Marwood still hasn't looked away.

"You-" Marwood begins, as thought just realising something, but he stops quickly. Before the entire word was out, really. His eyes wander and he looked away for the briefest of moments. Withnail feels those thing fingers slide into his hair and tug a little, maybe an accident, then they are gone. Marwood is burying himself under sheets again and Withnail feels a shudder run through him. He's forgotten how cold the apartment is because of everything that's happened today. It seems to have lasted a year, and yet when he looks back on it, it only consists of four parts. The dreaded morning. Marwood hadn't said a word to him. Hadn't left his room until he was ready to leave. Then the walk through the park, the gun and the chair… ' _Dostoyevsky described hell as perhaps nothing more than a room with a chair in it._ 'Withnail remembers absurdly. Perhaps a chair and a gun.

Looking back, it made him feel ill.

And here. Now, in bed

"You look ridiculous with that haircut," he says, somehow diluting the moment where he also slips back under the covers again. They are too fucking close. He shoves his arm down on top of the sheets between them, creating a barrier before drawing it under the covers again to keep warm. He already has goosebumps. The barrier is there not because he wants there, but because it is necessary that Marwood not know the… effect that he has. The power, in a sense…

Marwood smiles, humouring him. Too tired to argue.

Perhaps power isn't the right word. It's a hold, maybe. A hold on him because without Marwood there is no one and nothing.

Yes.

That seems about right. Withnail closes his eyes. It is a lot warmer, he notices, sharing a bed with someone. He is warmer than he has been in months.

Slowly, the morning light filters in, and they sleep.


End file.
